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The Shadows

A Novel

Audiobook
4 of 4 copies available
4 of 4 copies available

"If you liked The Whisper Man, you'll love this. Alex North has crafted a second novel which is just as gripping as his first and even scarier. Hugely atmospheric and deliciously creepy, it's about how the past encroaches on the present, and how dreaming influences reality, until in the frightening world of The Shadows, it becomes harder and harder to tell one from the other... and the nightmare takes over."
– Alex Michaelides, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Silent Patient


The haunting new thriller from Alex North, author of the New York Times bestseller The Whisper Man

You knew a teenager like Charlie Crabtree. A dark imagination, a sinister smile—always on the outside of the group. Some part of you suspected he might be capable of doing something awful. Twenty-five years ago, Crabtree did just that, committing a murder so shocking that it's attracted that strange kind of infamy that only exists on the darkest corners of the internet—and inspired more than one copycat.
Paul Adams remembers the case all too well: Crabtree—and his victim—were Paul's friends. Paul has slowly put his life back together. But now his mother, old and suffering from dementia, has taken a turn for the worse. Though every inch of him resists, it is time to come home.
It's not long before things start to go wrong. Paul learns that Detective Amanda Beck is investigating another copycat that has struck in the nearby town of Featherbank. His mother is distressed, insistent that there's something in the house. And someone is following him. Which reminds him of the most unsettling thing about that awful day twenty-five years ago.
It wasn't just the murder.
It was the fact that afterward, Charlie Crabtree was never seen again...
A Macmillan Audio production from Celadon Books

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from April 6, 2020
      The pseudonymous North follows up his sensational debut, 2019’s The Whisper Man, with another terrifying spine-tingler set in Featherbank, England. When Paul Adams was 15, his school playground was the scene of the murder of one of his friends. The alleged killer, teenager Charlie Crabtree, was another friend of Paul. Charlie disappeared and was never seen again. After going away to college, Paul doesn’t return to Featherbank until, as a 40-year-old English teacher, he decides he must come home to tend to his dying mother. To his dismay, history appears to be repeating itself with a series of copycat killings of teenage boys. Det. Amanda Beck, from the previous novel, investigates as the bodies pile up and suspects accumulate. Ghosts (real and imagined) continue to haunt Paul, whose senile mother fears something strange is in the house. The complex plot shifts smoothly between past and present with numerous unexpected twists. An overwhelming atmosphere of doom and disaster hovers over the perennial darkness of the nearby woods. This heart-pounding page-turner is impossible to put down. Agent: Sandra Sawicka, Marjacq (U.K.).

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrators John Heffernan and Hannah Arterton deliver this mystery with aplomb. After 25 years, Paul Adams, accused of murder as a teenager, returns to Gritton, an English industrial town. Time and viewpoints frequently shift in this mystery. Listeners accompany Adams as he reluctantly visits his mother in hospice. Heffernan portrays him as kind and feeling guilty for leaving her there. Arterton genuinely portrays Detective Amanda Blake, a skilled investigator who fights insecurity as she pursues a modern-day copycat murderer. Both narrators emotively describe the depressing locale and its residents, who include the teens obsessed with the original murder. Lucid dreaming plays an intriguing part in the story, as well. Equally frightening is the local shadowy forest and what it portends. Audio is a must for this unusual story and its poignant conclusion. S.G.B. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

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  • English

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This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Funding for additional materials was made possible by a grant from the New Hampshire Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities.